Student Essay

Jessa Alston-O’Connor
This essay was written by an M.A. student in a Museum Practice seminar in the Department of Art History, Faculty of Fine Arts, Concordia University. The seminar was taught by Dr. Loren Lerner with the assistance of Dina Vescio, a M.A. graduate of the program.

To some Canadian soldiers during the First World War, a small toy bear and a live bear served as symbols of love and hope. For Lieutenant Lawrence Browning Rogers, a farmer from Quebec, the teddy bear he carried in his pocket reminded him of his family and home.¹ For Captain Harry Colebourn, a veterinarian from Winnipeg, his pet black bear named Winnie became the well loved mascot of his veterinary corps and would go on to inspire the beloved children’s books about Winnie the Pooh and the Hundred Acre Wood. The stories of this teddy bear and black bear do not focus on accounts of noteworthy battles and military strategies, but present profound human stories of Canadians who fought and died during the First World War.

Lieutenant Lawrence Browning Rogers and his Toy Bear

The story of Lt. Lawrence Browning Rogers, his family and their little toy bear continues to resonate ninety years after the end of the war. Born in 1878, Rogers made his living as a farmer in East Farnham, Quebec, where he grew vegetables and raised a variety of livestock including chickens, ducks, a cow, a rabbit and a horse. He met and married his wife Janet May around the turn of the century (fig. 1). Together they raised two children, Ethel Aileen, born in 1905, and Howard, born in 1908 (fig. 2).

Lawrence Rogers was in his thirties by the outbreak of the war. Although he was considered ‘old’ when he enlisted as a soldier 1915, and later became a medic. He felt it was his duty to serve in the war (fig. 3).² The family exchanged over 200 letters and postcards during their time apart.³ Ten-year-old Aileen mailed her teddy bear to her father in the trenches; he kept it in his pocket for over two years as a cherished connection to home. Rogers’ granddaughter Roberta Rogers Innes explained that her aunt’s gift “was given to him as a good luck charm, and something to remind her father of all of them back home in Montreal.”⁴

Roberta found the box of old letters and the bear that her grandmother May had cherished during her life. “She saved everything,” Roberta explained, “it was almost a shrine to his memory.”⁵ Aspects of the family’s daily life – such as chores, farm repairs and winter hobbies – were shared in the letters, now a part of the Canadian War Museum archives. In a letter to Aileen, Rogers wrote, “Mother tells me you have had a fine time this winter, with skating, tobogganing and your dancing lessons. You will be able to teach me your dances when I get home for we don’t have any dancing over here.”⁶ He sometimes tried to explain the harsh realities of trench warfare on the Western Front through letters to his wife, May:

We just sit and wait for something to happen, hold your breath when the shell screams and sigh with relief when it breaks far enough away or just hugs the wall of the trench or dig out if it comes too close to be comfortable… Had Dante lived through this, he would have had other ideas for his inferno.⁷

A last letter from his son Howard written on September 8, 1917, never reached Lawrence; he was killed while tending to the wounded during the Battle of Passchendaele on October 30, 1917. It was returned to the family along with the toy bear and Lawrence’s personal items. Today, the letter is exhibited alongside the teddy bear at the Canadian War Museum. In cursive lettering Howard wrote:

Dear Daddy, We have had holidays since the 3rd and I have played all the time and have to go back to-morrow morning. I went to the movies twice. A little boy just came to the door selling tickets for some movies for 5 cents but we would not take one. I try my hardest at school to come first. I joined the YMCA and have been there twice at gym. I haven’t had a swim yet. I will have to close now I am burning all of the electric light. Daddy from Howard.⁸

Before its donation to the Canadian War Museum in 2004, the bear was chosen as the most significant First World War artefact from the 3,000 that had been submitted to the Memory Project, a venture and website sponsored by the Globe and Mail and the Dominion Institute.⁹ In 2008, the bear’s story was published by Key Porters Books as a children’s book titled A Bear in War, written by Lt. Lawrence Browning Rogers’ great-granddaughter Stephanie Innes and Harry Endrulat (fig. 4). ‘Teddy’ narrates the book as he journeys from the Rogers home in Quebec all the way to the front in Belgium. Stephanie Innes’ book adaptation of her family’s story captures the love, hope and loss felt by so many soldiers and families during the First World War. It honours a small teddy bear that connected a father to his family.

Captain Harry Colebourn and his Bear, Winnie

While a toy bear lifted the spirits of Lt. Lawrence Browning Rogers during the First World War, a live black bear became the companion of veterinary officer Captain Harry Colebourn. Born in England in 1867, Colebourn immigrated to Canada in 1905. He had a passion for animals, and by 1908 he had saved enough to go to veterinary school in Guelph, Ontario. Upon graduating in 1911 he took a position with the Department of Agriculture in Winnipeg, Manitoba.¹⁰ As many young men did in his time, he joined the militia. By the time war broke out in 1914, Colebourn had military training and was ready to go to the front (fig. 5).

In August of 1914, Colebourn headed east to Valcartier, Quebec, where new Canadian recruits were grouped, and soon to be sent overseas as the First Contingent. His was assigned to the Canadian Army Veterinarian Corps to ensure the care of the thousands of horses that would be brought to the front to haul wagons, transport the wounded and bring ammunition to the front lines.¹¹ On his journey, the train stopped at White River, a small town in Ontario. There, Colebourn saw a hunter with a female black bear cub, about 7 months old.¹² Her mother had been killed. In his journal on August 24, Colebourn noted that he ‘bought bear for $20’, which would come to approximately $300 today.¹³ The veterinarian from Winnipeg named his new friend, Winnie.

At the camp in Valcartier, Winnie quickly became a favorite among the soldiers. They liked to feed the bear and pose with her for photographs. Winnie was exceptionally tame for a wild bear. Colebourn’s son, Fred, explained, “my father was such a kind, gentle man. He used to say you can tell a lot about someone by the way they treat their anmials.”¹⁴ The unique bear cub was allowed to accompany Colebourn overseas on October 3 aboard the SS Manitou, bound for a Canadian training site at Salisbury Plain in England (fig. 6). There, Winnie continued to entertain the soldiers. As a pet to both her owner and enjoyed by so many other soldier, Winnie was adopted as the official mascot of the Canadian Army Veterinarian Corps.¹⁵

When Colebourn was deployed to France, it was clear that Winnie could not follow him to the front lines. In December 1914, Colebourn took the bear to the London Zoo, with intentions of taking her back to Canada with him when the war was over.¹⁶ Winnie was one of six black bears given or loaned to the zoo by members of the Canadian forces. Colebourn was not the only soldier who had adopted a bear during the war, but no other bear in the zoo was as gentle and good-natured as Winnie.¹⁷

Winnie at the Zoo and Christopher Robin

In his journals, Colebourn noted many visits to England to see Winnie whenever he was on leave. By 1918, the bear cub had become one of the star attractions of the London Zoo.¹⁸ She was the tamest, most trustworthy bear any of the zoo keepers had ever seen, welcoming visits to her cage where children could touch her and feed her condensed milk with honey, known as ‘Winnie’s cocktails’.¹⁹ In a country suffering deeply from the war, the black bear captivated children and their parents. As a result, when Colebourn was ready to leave for Canada in 1919, he officially donated Winnie to the London Zoo, both in gratitude for their care and in recognition of how special she was to her keepers and visitors.²⁰

In 1924, a four-year-old boy named Christopher Robin became especially fond of Winnie. He was so enchanted by her that he renamed his own toy bear, Edward Bear. He gave it the new name Winnie and added ‘Pooh’, the name of a swan he once had.²¹ Robin’s father, Alan Alexander Milne, was a writer and playwright. Inspired by his son’s delight in the bear, Milne began to write stories about Winnie the Pooh and his friends in the Hundred Acre Wood (fig. 7). Winnie the Pooh first appeared as part of the Christmas Eve issue of London’s Evening News in 1925. Milne would go on to write three more books about the bear. While Winnie the Pooh has since entertained millions of readers for generations to come, the original Winnie passed away in 1934.

The Canadian origins of Winnie were forgotten for decades, until Colebourn’s son Fred began to share his father’s story with the media in 1987. Today, plaques and life size sculptures by artist William Epp stand in the London Zoo and Winnipeg’s Assiniboine Park, commemorating the veterinarian and his bear (fig. 8). A sculpture of the bear cub by artist Lorne McKean was also installed in the zoo.

Despite the horror and devastation of the First World War, these bears were not forsaken by Canadian soldiers. A small teddy bear and a remarkable black bear brought comfort to these men and a glimpse of life in Canada, far away from the frontlines. The bears were symbols of hope that these men would survive to see better times. Sending her teddy bear to war was Aileen’s only way to offer her father a small piece of home. Winnie the bear grew from an orphaned cub in Ontario, to become a beloved bear at the zoo for thousands of London families. These bears still tell the profound stories of those separated and lost during the war, and are testaments to the hope of the human spirit even in the bleakest of times.

LIST OF FIGURES

fig. 1 Lawrence and May Rogers on their wedding day, early 1900s. (Photo: {www.abearinwar.com})

fig. 2 May, Aileen and Howard Rogers. (Photo: {www.abearinwar.com})

fig. 3 Lieutenant Lawrence Browning Rogers, 1915. (Photo: AN. 20040015-003 The Canadian War Museum Archives)

fig. 4 A Bear in War (book cover), 2008. (Photo: Key Porter Books)

fig. 5 Captain Harry Colebourn. (Photo: Archives of Manitoba, Colebourn, D. Harry 9 {N10467})

fig. 6 Captain Colebourn and Winnie, 1914, Salisbury Plains, England. (Photo: Archives of Manitoba, Colebourn, D. Harry 6 {N10317})

fig. 7 Howard Coster, Alan Alexander (‘A.A.’)Milne and Christopher Robin Milne, sepia-matt print, 1926, 219 mm x 257 mm) arched top. Given by Estate of Howard Coster, 1959 (Photo: NPG P715, National Portrait Gallery, London, England {http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait.php?search=ap&npgno=P715})

NOTES

1. The author gratefully acknowledges the support of Stephanie Innes and Harry Endrulat, authors of A Bear in War, and the book’s publisher Key Porter Books, for supplying the images that accompany this text.
2. A Bear in War,Muse Publishing and Communications Inc. (2008) 20 Oct. 2009 {abearinwar.com}.
3. A Bear in War website.
4. Rod Mickleburgh, “It Went to Hell and Back: Mr. Roger’s Teddy Bear,” Globe and Mail (10 Aug. 2003).
5. Mickleburgh.
6. A Bear in War website.
7. A Bear in War website.
8. Teddy Bear, Ottawa: CWM 20040015-002 Canadian War Museum Collections and Archives.
9. Teddy Bear, CWM 20030015-001; Mickleburgh.
10. Fred Colebourn, “Lt. Harry Colebourn and Winnie-the Bear,” Fort Garry Horse Museum and Archives (May 1988) 20 Oct. 2009{ http://www.fortgarryhorse.ca/phpweb/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=22&MMN_position=44:44}.
11. Val Shushkewich, The Real Winnie: A One-of-a Kind Bear, (Toronto: Natural Heritage Books, 2003) 5.
12. Shushkewich, 10
13. Shushkewich, 8.
14. Fred Colebourn, “Little Did He Know…” White River District Historical Society.
15. Colebourn, “Lt. Harry Colebourn”.
16. Colebourn, “Lt. Harry Colebourn”.
17. Shushkewich, 30.
18. Colebourn, “Lt. Harry Colebourn”.
19. Shushkewich, 45.
20. Colebourn, “Lt. Harry Colebourn”.
21. Shushkewich, 51.